The nationwide search for Raul Garcia-Gomez, the 19-year-old illegal immigrant suspected in the May 8 shooting death of Denver Police detective Donald “Donnie” Young, raises a contentious issue:

How much should the facts in a criminal case affect the ongoing debate over the impacts of illegal immigration? Should the emotions stirred by a specific death be allowed to spill over and affect the tone and scope of the larger public discussion?

One view is that the two subjects shouldn’t be mixed and that the only people who want to mix them are those who oppose illegal immigration. A moment’s consideration of this nation’s history suggests otherwise.

Policy debates in this country are almost always affected by the dramatic facts arising from individual cases. Consider, for example, existing policies toward alcohol, or child or domestic abuse, or school violence. All of these areas of the law have been directly and profoundly affected by individual stories. Why should the policy toward illegal immigration be any different?

The case of Garcia-Gomez cries out for a complete public inquiry, not only into his history and his circumstances as an illegal immigrant, but several other policy areas as well.

Whether Garcia-Gomez has already fled back to Mexico to avoid prosecution is not known, but it is no exaggeration to say that if he has any sense he has done so.

Colorado law specifically lists the killing of a police officer as one of several recognized aggravating factors that qualifies for the death penalty. Should the 19-year-old be captured in the United States, one of the first things the local district attorney would have to decide is whether to seek the death penalty.

It is long-standing Mexican policy to avoid extraditing suspected murderers to the United States if a suspect faces the death sentence. In fact, Mexico won’t cooperate if a suspect faces life without the possibility of parole.

No wonder, then, that thousands of U.S. murder cases haven’t been prosecuted because the suspect has fled to Mexico.

Cases like the death of detective Young shed light on this area of public policy. The more light that is cast, the more likely it is that the U.S. government can coerce Mexico to cooperate more fully.

In the meantime, there are other public policy issues raised by the Garcia-Gomez case that deserve public attention:

What techniques are used by illegal immigrants to obtain employment in the United States?

Does Denver’s policy of nondiscrimination for “all residents” effectively give illegal immigrants all or most of the rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens? Does it blur, if not obliterate, the differences between citizens and non-citizens?

What is the full impact of illegal immigrants on the correctional systems in the state?

What is the impact on the medical delivery system in Colorado, where in a recent year almost 7,000 illegal immigrants gave birth in state hospitals, with their delivery costs fully paid by the federal government?

Inquiries into the effects of current immigration policy may certainly stir emotions, but that is surely no reason to avoid the inquiry altogether.

The Denver Police Department has been wrongly criticized for its zeal in the pursuit of Garcia-Gomez. Specifically, it has been said that the department wouldn’t exhibit the same zeal if the murder victim weren’t a police officer.

This complaint is misguided and ignores the fact that the killing of a police officer is, by definition, a special case, a priority case. The killing of an officer, or a judge or a prosecutor, is properly viewed as an assault on the notion of the rule of law.

Therefore, the search for Garcia-Gomez is rightly a vigorous one. An attack on a police officer is an attack on all of us, and that is why this case deserves all of the attention it has received. Should it also lead to a better public understanding of the impact of illegal immigration and to changes in some of those policies, so much the better.